Celebrating More Than the New Year: The Hindu Nationalist Greeting Cards

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The dissemination and reception of B.’s images takes place on a pan-Indian level, in the closely-knit networks of the Sangh Parivar, particularly in the field of their shakhas, shishu mandirs (schools) and didactic exhibitions, as well as BJP members and business networks. Like schoolbooks, B.’s pamphlets and cards are used for eulogies on nationalism in Sangh Parivar-funded schools and neighbourhood organisations, which organise and conduct drawing competitions for children by asking them to colour in photocopies of his drawings of national heroes. B. explains:

“in addition to conducting teaching and training courses we show them cards, posters and pamphlets about our great patriots. We also make them aware about the history of Hindu society.”

	Familiar networks of image distribution and visual regimes are drawn upon. One such regime is the ubiquitous religious or ‘framed’ poster, a must in many households. Personal shrines with posters of gods and goddesses are now to be extended by portraits of Hindutva’s great national heroes. As B. comments:

“we would like to see every Hindu home in the country display these images. We would like these images to unite the Hindu society. Indeed, the people are beginning to accept these images.”

To have nationalist figures and themes gain the same popularity and ‘intimacy’ like family photographs or framed god posters is certainly a high aspiration that, in the eyes of many Hindutva representatives, would affirm their ideology’s efficacy. Tens of thousands of cards, printed in bright colours by Matribhumi (Motherland) Printers in New Delhi (whose owner is a former RSS pracharak), and sold at the cost of Rs. 5-10 (ca. 4-10 cents) are produced each year. Despite their ties to a specific dates and events, they are often on sale for more than a year, thus allowing a collector like me to acquire a whole set.

Since the early 1990s, B. has designed more than a dozen New Year cards with different motifs. The crucial occasions to produce the cards are two kinds of Hindu New Year: Diwali, and Vikram Samvath. The latter is a festival celebrated mainly within Hindutva circles. These New Year cards should be seen as direct responses to the desires and tastes of the growing urbanised Hindu middle classes, a heterogenous section of Indian society that has generally been supportive of nationalist ideologies since the late 19th century, and which today constitutes one of Hindutva’s main pillars. In the 1990s, the act of sending New Year cards to family members, friends or business-partners had become a fashionable practice of the middle classes, through which one’s ‘status’ could be affirmed, one’s name and thus knowledge thereof circulated. Among Hindutva circles, more or less important members of different organisations would send each other cards, but mostly, nurture or improve their relations with ‘important’ people in the higher strata of organisation.
           
Usually, a New Year card carries an image in front, and well-wishes for the family, a successful year of business, pledges to the nation, historical charts, etc., inside. Some cards are associated with the RSS’s calendar of national holidays and centenary celebrations, including Hindu New Year, Hedgewar’s birthday, Republic Day, Independence Day. Second, others seek to recruit national figures who have not aligned themselves to Hindutva but are moulded into the Hindutva family’s heritage post mortem (e.g. Bhimrao Ambedkar, Subhas Chandra Bose, Bhagat Singh, etc.). Third, still others promote issues that are considered to be historical markers of national unity reacting to contemporary events, such as the nuclear tests in 1998, the Kashmir crisis in 1999 and the like. >>>

Gallery of Greeting Cards - - - - Read Further